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How to use the “past exonerative“ tense

7 points| catbird | 5 years ago |mcsweeneys.net

1 comment

order

catbird|5 years ago

Recent events reminded me of an old McSweeney’s piece [0] on the clever use of grammatical forms to remove any implication of agency or culpability from a description of past events. When I went to search for that, this new article popped up. English is a fascinating language.

[0] https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-...